French pay-TV group Canal+ and Italian public broadcaster RAI have picked up Audrey’s Back, the Quebecois dramedy about a coma victim’s return to life that won the Grand Prix at this year’s Canneseries festival.
Germany’s Beta Film, which is handling international sales on the show, closed deals with Canal+ and RAI, with future deals in the works. Beta launched Audrey’s Back at the MIPTV market earlier this year.
Florence Longpré, who co-wrote the 10-part series, stars as the titular Audrey, a coma patient, put into hospital following an accident on prom night, who suddenly wakes up after a decade and a half and slowly returns to life, learning to talk, to walk and to remember the person she was before. Co-creator Guillaume Lambert calls Audrey’s Back a typical coming-of-age story “just 15 years too late.”
Denis Bouchard, Josée Deschênes, and Zeneb Blanchet co-star. Audrey’s Back was produced by Pixcom in collaboration with Quebecor Media.
In a separate TV deal, About Premium Content (APC) closed its first sales for another MIPTV highlight: the Icelandic thriller Blackport.
Topic picked up North American rights for the eight-part crime series, with SBS taking Australia, AMC Networks International securing Spain and Portugal, TG4 acquiring TV rights in Ireland and RTS taking Switzerland.
Gísli Örn Garoarsson, Björn Hlynur Haraldsson, and Nína Dögg Filippusdóttir created and star in Blackport, which was produced by Vesturport and Turbine Studios for Arte (France) and RUV (Iceland), with APC handling worldwide distribution rights. The series follows a young married couple (Garoarsson and Filippusdóttir) who try and build up a small fishing empire in their Icelandic village, only to find their plans threatened when the government starts enforcing restrictive fishing quotas.
Source: Hollywood
